Rime of the Restless Mariners

Tales Dead Men Tell

Across the Caribbean, from Nassau to Port Royal and through the rum shops of Old Tortuga, they tell tales of the ghost ship Jeremiah’s Bride.

The Bride was, they say, a Royal Navy sloop-of-war, once called Invidia, damaged in battle and sold on to the Company before ending up a slaver’s escort. After a vicious mutiny she turned pirate and was hunted down by the Navy she once served. The pirates had an island hideaway, some say in Darien, others in the Gulf of Honduras, and there they found a new figurehead, an old idol of a terrible Indian goddess. Stern-faced Invidia was replaced with tusked and bloodthirsty Itzpapalotl and the ship renamed Jeremiah’s Bride. The Bride cut a bloody swathe through the Caribbean for five years until a Navy squadron was dispatched to bring her to justice. She was sunk, but not destroyed, for the ship sails still, her rigging be-slimed with seaweed and her dead crew hungering for booty and souls.

“Colonel” or “Cockle” or perhaps “Kahlil” Khan is her captain, a strange grim faced Arab who knows neither mercy nor joy. His origins are unknown, for no army will own to him, but he knows the Caribbean like few others, every forgotten inlet and every treacherous reef.

The Reverend Barton Welles, the “Bloody Bishop”, was a defrocked clergyman turned slaver, murdered in a mutiny by his own human cargo. He’s the Quarter Master of the ship and its cruelest buccaneer.

Beauchamp “Beechum” St John is the navigator, a Royal Navy officer who died in disgrace and perhaps the sole member of the damned crew with a shred of honour.

The Boatswain is Judas Godbegood, himself a mutinous slave flogged to death for insurrection. Tales describe him as an African prince before indignity and shame became his lot.

A woman on ship? Quality Durant disguised herself as a man to find her father, long lost at sea, but her skills as an artificer rivaled her parent’s. Her hair still burns from the explosion that killed her and she is Master Gunner on board ship.

Lascar Joe is the Chinaman (actually a Siam) who was Ship’s Cook on Invidia and later on Jeremiah’s Bride, with no one realising he was dead the whole time. A serene Buddhist, Joe (or Tcho) knows strange Eastern fighting styles.

Pedro Aguilar Su De Cuerda is an authentic Spanish privateer, hanged by the British and haunting the ship that caught him. Some call him the deadliest rogue in this crew and a deadshot with a musket. He’s the Rigger, a master of knots and agile as a monkey.